Reading lots of statistics is usually a bore, often a sleep producer. Not the numbers that follow which relate chiefly to debts and deficits. Financially speaking, not only are they not boring, but in their own way they’re as frightening as flesh-eating Hannibal Lechter in The Silence of the Lambs because these figures signal even greater economic hardship, which means more chaos on the jobs front, less money in your wallet, higher interest rates, a potential bloodbath in bonds, and an abrupt end at some point to the current stock market rally.
First, though, about a year ago, a couple of well known and supposedly savvy financial guys, Federal Reserve skipper Ben Bernanke and JPMorgan Chase chief, gave us the good news, or at least, so we thought: The credit crunch, they declared, is over. That declaration, as we all know, has proved to be about as credible as John Edwards.
What makes it all so relevant now is that the amount of available credit–the backbone or backbreaker of economic expansion–is still a gory story, although some economic trackers, obvious long-time residents of Disneyland, are saying the just opposite, that the credit squeeze is practically history.
Granted, if you’re Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Roger Federer, Carl Icahn or Tiger Woods, that’s probably true. But not for the rest of us, even including some big earners.
To read the full article, click here …
